STUDENT-ATHLETES AT 1ST-YEAR CRISTO REY LEARN TO WORK, PLAY

by Alejandro Danois

(video interviews below)

At the close of each school day, the Cristo Rey Jesuit High School baseball players, along with coach Mike Walsh, gather their equipment and begin their warm up jog before the start of practice.

Starting from the school’s building at 420 South Chester Street in East Baltimore, the team snakes through the city streets before reaching the picturesque, wide expanse of grass and trees, making their way to the baseball diamond in the city’s Patterson Park.

After winding their way down the hill that hugs the lake- past runners, bikers, bird watchers and bystanders tossing bits of bread in the direction of mallard ducks - the players form a circle in front of the pitcher’s mound for stretching and callisthenic exercises before breaking off into groups to toss grounders and pop flies to one another.

Only one player is dressed in baseball pants while the others wear basketball shorts, khaki’s, work pants and camouflage Capri’s. A handful of the young teens wear cleats while the majority have their feet snuggled comfortably in high top sneakers.

Coach Walsh walks near each pair of players, examining the varying degrees of throwing motion and foot placement amidst the crisp, snapping sound of baseballs colliding against leather webbed mitts.

“Act like your playing in a game,” Walsh reassuringly exhorts his charges, as some throws are a little too lackadaisical for his liking. “Throw it like you’re trying to get the runner out.”

During pop up drills, he again implores his players to toss the ball with more urgency.

“When the ball goes up in the air, take three steps back to judge its distance,” says Walsh. “And when you catch it, throw it back hard like you’re throwing from the outfield to the second baseman or the shortstop!”

More often than not, the balls come spilling out of their gloves, which many of the Cristo Rey Hornets are trying to get accustomed to wearing. Errant throws are the norm.

“One or two of these guys might make a high school team but for most of them, this is their first experience playing baseball,” said Walsh. “A lot of them didn’t own a baseball mitt.

The baseball team is not the only entity at the school that’s trying something new. In fact, Baltimore’s Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, like its infant athletic program, has only been in existence since September.

The coeducational Catholic school, sponsored by the Maryland Province Jesuits, is part of a nationwide network of 19 Cristo Rey institutions that provide college prep educational experiences to young men and women from traditionally low income urban area

The first Cristo Rey Jesuit High School was housed in a roller skating rink in Chicago in 1996. With students excelling in the classroom, combined with the novel concept of the eager adolescents participating in the workforce to earn tuition, the first Cristo Rey school was an immediate success.

With enthusiastic support from parents and the business community, the Reverend John Foley embarked on replicating that success throughout the country, giving rise to the Cristo Rey Network. By 2006, 96 percent of graduates from the network schools, stretching from New York to Los Angeles enrolled in college.

Housed in the former Holy Rosary School building adjacent to the Holy Rosary Church on South Chester Street, there are one hundred and twelve ninth graders currently enrolled in the Baltimore location.

Next year, the school will expand to include tenth and ninth graders. By 2010-2011, when the current freshman class graduates, Cristo Rey Jesuit will have a full secondary school complement of ninth through twelfth graders.

In addition to the rigors of academics, each student is employed in the Corporate Internship Program at venerable institutions like Johns Hopkins Hospital, Legg Mason, DLA Piper Rudnick and others.

“Every student has a job that supports their tuition and they each work one full day a week in a professional environment,” said Mary Beth Lennon, the school’s Assistant to the President and Director of Communications.

In the fall of 2007, Cristo Rey inaugurated its athletic program with girls and boys soccer.

“I’ve never played soccer before and on television, it looks so easy,” said fourteen year old Darius Sanders. “But once we got out there and started kicking the ball around, I found that it’s not as easy as it looks. I found out that a lot of people around the world have a passion for soccer, it helps you in terms of training for other sports and it gave me a different outlook.

The girls’ soccer program was strictly intra-mural while the boys’ team played two games against Don Bosco Cristo Rey from Takoma Park, splitting the series.

During the winter season, “The Hall”- the school’s large multi-purpose space that serves as an assembly hall, auditorium and cafeteria – would transform in the afternoons into the gymnasium.

At 3:30 in the afternoon, the players would break down the tables, put them in the storage room which is nestled beneath a huge bingo board and put the chairs to the side of the expansive room.

They’d retrieve balls from a closet in the hallway near the school’s main entrance, which also doubled as a home for donated dress clothes.

“Our students are required to wear professional attire every day,” said Walsh. “It’s simple for the boys who wear slacks and ties but more difficult for the girls, who have to wear appropriate slacks, blouses, dresses and skirts.”

For the first half of their initial hoops season, the Hornets practiced without any lines on the wooden floor to mark free throw, three-point or out of bounds lines. Instead, they approximated the various boundaries with tape and cones.

A school trustee later paid to refurbish and line the court.

Without locker rooms or bleachers, the team could not host any games. Instead, thanks to partnerships with schools like Loyola-Blakefield, McDonoh and others, they barnstormed around the area playing “home” games at a number of suitable facilities.

“Those schools reached out to us and let us use their gyms,” said Walsh.

The highlight of the season was participating, and winning a game, in the King of Kings Basketball Tournament, held at Georgetown Prep in Bethesda. The King of Kings was the first ever tournament comprised of Cristo Network teams. Other participants included Don Bosco Cristo Rey of Takoma Park, Cristo Rey New York and Christ the King of Newark, New Jersey.

“We only won two games all season but I enjoyed playing on the basketball team,” said fourteen year old Jordan Birden. “We would take each loss, go back to practice and try our best.

“It was our first experience playing together and we had our first game two or three weeks after we started practicing,” said fourteen year old Omari Mitchell. “The most fun was going to D.C. and winning the game in the tournament against the Cristo Rey team from New Jersey.”

“This is my first time playing on a baseball team and it’s kind of fun,” said Mitchell. “I have to work on my hitting and throwing. I can throw with power but my accuracy needs a lot of work.”

The Hornets will get their first taste of high school baseball, with umpires, chalk lined grass, bases and a pitcher’s mound in the upcoming days.

“Playing baseball is much harder than it looks on TV,” said Birden, who’s also in his first year playing the sport. “I really like it because you have to think when you’re playing. It’s not a game that just happens.”

The athletic program at Cristo Rey harkens back to an earlier time when sporting experience was an extension of one’s educational experience. Somehow, that perspective has been lost by some who are driven by a win at all costs mentality. Unfortunately, that mindset is reaching down to the youngest of age groups, spoiling the simple joys of competition.

“Sports are good,” said Birden, who is also the student council president. “When we have more of a variety and more choices for the girls, hopefully more people will try it and have fun.”

“We’re not the place to go right now, say for parents that are interested in their children getting athletic scholarships and going on to play big time sports in college,” said Walsh. “But we are a place where students can get a top notch education and get prepared to go on to college.”